I closed my eyes. The mother’s heat was close, so damn close. I could almost touch her now, and the fact that I couldn’t had tears of rage and frustration stinging my eyes. I took a deep, shuddering breath and released it slowly. Patience. I just had to have patience.

“Why do you want her name? What do you and your psycho boss want from her?”

“My psycho boss wants nothing from her,” Frederick said. “In fact, he would be rather peeved by my actions.”

I blinked. “You’re not here on his orders?”

“No.” Frederick drew in a deep breath and smiled benignly. “I do so love the smell of fear and rampant need. The latter is Hunt’s, of course, not yours.”

He was as sick as Hunt. And just as dead. Or would be, when I broke through to the mother.

“I wouldn’t think going against someone like Rinaldo would be the best idea,” I said.

“You’re right, it’s not.” He produced a knife and flicked the blade open. “But what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. The name, Emberly. Otherwise, this knife will taste the sweetness of your flesh.”

I hesitated. The knife’s point replaced his fingers against my pubic bone. Sweat broke out across my brow and dribbled down the side of my face. Or maybe that was tears. “Ronda Peterson. Her name is Ronda Peterson.”

“Indeed?” Frederick glanced at Hunt. “Do we believe her, Theodore?”

“With the drug in her system, she can’t lie.” His reply was little more than a low, husky growl. “It has to be the truth.”

I bit back a harsh laugh. If they believed that, then they truly knew little about phoenixes. No drug designed to work on a human would ever be able to withstand the sheer amount of heat currently boiling through my system.

“Indeed,” Frederick repeated. “What did you and Miller find in Brooklyn?”

“Rotting dead people,” I replied. “What sort of sick spell was that?”

“It was neither my magic protecting that area nor my spell cast on those cloaks.”

“Then why were they rotting?”

“That, it would appear, was an unfortunate side effect of the virus.”

I blinked. “It rots you?”

“Not everyone. Did you never wonder why some infected were branded, and some were not? It was easier to identify which type of ‘infected’ we were dealing with.”

“Meaning those who were branded were the ones who would putrefy?”

“Yes. It is also what sends them mad.”

Meaning Sam—and Jackson, if he was still infected—should be safe. Unfortunately, it also meant that Frederick was. Not that that would really matter. Not once I got free.

“What else did you discover?” he said.

“Nothing much.”

The tip of the knife pierced my skin, and blood began to flow. “I’m not believing that,” Frederick said.

“If you were Luke’s second, you should know what was in that area.”